The biggest surprise for me was the https://hexbear.net count, an instance I hardly interact with.

Community Count Community Subscriber Count
beehaw.org 6 133450
hexbear.net 33 663204
lemdro.id 1 17052
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 15907
lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 53006
lemmy.ml 14 356460
lemmy.one 1 16257
lemmy.world 39 851950
lemmynsfw.com 2 33586
sh.itjust.works 1 16006
sopuli.xyz 1 14093

The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as “suspicious”)

EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:

Community Count Community Active Month Count
awful.systems 1 2616
feddit.org 2 7363
feddit.uk 2 5289
hexbear.net 1 2952
lemdro.id 1 2898
lemm.ee 3 8898
lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 11422
lemmy.ca 3 14910
lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 13752
lemmy.ml 10 54949
lemmy.world 57 338384
lemmy.wtf 1 3602
lemmy.zip 3 12020
mander.xyz 1 11469
sh.itjust.works 5 37365
slrpnk.net 3 10897
sopuli.xyz 2 10070
ttrpg.network 1 4107

Community Count:

Community Users:

  • @NOT_RICK
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    13328 days ago

    I knew hexbear was big but not that big

    • @[email protected]
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      28 days ago

      It’s big enough to feel their presence in every corner of the platform unfortunately

      I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt ppl who praise Soviets or North Korea

      • @NOT_RICK
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        7128 days ago

        Yeah I can’t say I was bothered when LW defederated. I’ve gotten in way fewer stupid arguments since they did the same with Lemmygrad. IIRC LW didn’t even let hexbear federate in the first place.

        • @[email protected]
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          28 days ago

          I don’t like defederations. I prefer to see everything, every post and comment and then block users/instances on my own if it becomes too much.

          Literally a second ago I blocked another tankie, from LW this time. Before I even managed to type this comment fully. But then I don’t shy from making comments that attract them if I disagree with something. So inbox always busy

            • @[email protected]
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              28 days ago

              Yes but this may be a side effect of turning off the points experiment. Instead of getting dopamine from points I only get replies. So it could be that I subconsciously make my comments in a way that is more likely to attract some kind of response.

              My main goal for Lemmy was to break Reddit addiction and I feel gaining likes plays a big part in staying glued to the screen

              • @[email protected]
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                728 days ago

                Seems like a good strategy would be to not have every post and comment shown to you if your goal is to break your habit of spending too much time on your phone or PC.

          • @[email protected]
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            2228 days ago

            I would much rather signup to an instance that handles that for me.

            As long as the instance is clear about what they defederate from and their reasons, then I’m happy with that. And if I wasn’t, I could choose a different instance.

            • @[email protected]
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              428 days ago

              Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).

              I did end up blocking the lemmy.ml instance though, fuck that place. I haven’t even blocked hexbear or lemmygrad.

              • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝
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                428 days ago

                Our instance is federated with hexbear, lemmygrad etc. I want to be resonsible for what I see and block, I’m really not a fan of defederation unless it’s a last resort (i.e. CSAM or other illegal content).

                Yes, that’s pretty much our take on it: we’ll defederate CSAM (and nonce-adjacent) instances asap, those with lax registration tend to become havens for spammers and trolls, so there is usually a wave of defederating, then someone reaches out to them, it gets sorted and we allow them back in. That tends to be the regular defederation and isn’t controversial. Defederating, for example, Hexbear over, for example, trolling would be a bigger deal and we’d try and speak to the other Admins about it before any permanent banning.

              • @[email protected]
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                528 days ago

                lol, forgot I was even on my feddit.uk account.

                I’d already gone through blocking all of that stuff via my app before the defederation stuff happened, but if I were signing up to a new instance I’d appreciate it being blocked by default.

          • @[email protected]
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            428 days ago

            I think ideally a Lemmy client could connect to a number of instances, and you could add the more contentious ones yourself.

            Some of these places are literally hosting child porn. You don’t want that mirrored to a server that you’re responsible for.

          • @[email protected]
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            228 days ago

            Same here. I’ll curate my personal feed but I’ll occasionally scroll everything just to see what random new instance I’ll find, and to keep myself aware of what the current rhetoric is with the various groups.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 days ago

        You’re not really using the fediverse until you’ve been told that you’ll get the bullet, too. Sometimes, it’s exhausting commenting something pretty uncontroversial and then seeing like eight notifications and realizing it was on Hexbear.

        • Transporter Room 3
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          3228 days ago

          Can you truly say you’ve had the HB experience if you haven’t recieved emoji/sticker/gif spam from people who weren’t alive for 9/11, have never been outside their country, and refuse to listen to opposing views, but know with full certainty that all western countries are 100% full of genociders and colonial rapists who all deserve the glorious death the super benign, extremely peaceful and misunderstood countries of North Korea, China, and Russia who have never once been correctly accused of human rights violations…

          And of course, if they point out that your country has dipped into those things in the past, well your entire worldview is shattered and their whataboutism has solved everything and proves you deserve the death they crave for you.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 days ago

            I am genuinely sad for HB. There are lgbt ppl there, generally dear to me. Seeing them enjoy such cesspit lured in by cultish atmosphere, supporting the very forces that can only destroy but not build anything. It is personal.

          • @[email protected]
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            -228 days ago

            I can see why folk don’t like hexbear as they come off as leftist 4chan, but you don’t need to make things up. They often talk about traveling. I agree with a lot of their content and disagree with some, I’ve been to 10 countries. In the plane to France, an African told me how their country is still enslaved to France. Personally I don’t see the value in the immediate destruction of the west, but with their leaderships ardent support for Nazi Germany, Apartheid, the Climate Crisis and assassination of climate activists, others, and now Zionism, they should lose influence through any means necessary.

            • @[email protected]
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              28 days ago

              come off as leftist 4chan

              has the largest weekly trans megathread in the entire fediverse, a supermajority of non-cishet users, aggressively bans racism, bigotry and transphobia on sight, has hard-coded mandatory pronoun tags

              make it make sense

              • @[email protected]
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                328 days ago

                Didn’t mean it literally, only that it’s so shitposty that it can overshadow most serious conversations. It is a far better moderated and accepting community. It’s mainly their trans posts that made me better accept trans individuals. And I discourage writing them off like most should with 4chan.

          • @[email protected]
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            -228 days ago

            On the flipside there is the .World experience. Where Julian Assagne is a war criminal. And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

            • Blaze (he/him)
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              1628 days ago

              And the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan was good because it killed a lot of Muslims and liberated those savage hijab wearing women from being alive.

              Would you have link to such statements? Seems wild

              • Transporter Room 3
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                1528 days ago

                Yeah, I’ve never once seen anything but criticism over the US’s involvement in the middle east.

                The most I’ve seen is a couple people saying the equivalent of “well SOMEONE had to do something about X” And a bunch of others jumping on them to clarify that X either never existed, or was massively exaggerated and the US isn’t the World Police.

                Genuinely would love to see someone link a good faith comment trying to argue the above, so I can tell them all about how they’re a fucknut

            • @jumjummy
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              228 days ago

              Wtf are you talking about? Oh, a .ml user. Ok then.

            • @btaf45
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              -728 days ago

              Julian Assange is a bootlicker and Kremlin stooge who sold us out to the American and Russian billionaires. The Mueller Report proved he was explicitly trying to get Treason Trump elected and working with Putin to push disinformation to that end.

          • @[email protected]
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            328 days ago

            Yep, that’s me. You could probably find a few more good examples of me stepping in shit on Hexbear, that’s hardly the first.

          • @[email protected]
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            127 days ago

            I disagree with those comments, but they seem pretty mild to have been banned. I just don’t see how it’s productive to ban all liberals the moment they try to explain their views. All that does is push people away who could potentially have been a future ally.

            • @[email protected]
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              427 days ago

              For starters, all liberals have Reddit and Lemmy.world, which are large. Where do leftists have?

              Secondly, this comment is indistinguishable from concern-trolling. I’d have to read through your post history or go back and forth with you to know if you were an honest actor or just a troll.

              Thirdly, most of us know your views, and have rejected them. Why would we care to hear them? Ask the homeless people in any major city how important discussions of freedom are. So fuck your so-called “productivity.” If you were an ally you’d listen and be an ally.

              • @[email protected]
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                -127 days ago

                For starters, all liberals have Reddit and Lemmy.world, which are large. Where do leftists have?

                I agree that lemmy.world is a primarily liberal instance, but I haven’t seen the same level of censorship on lemmy.world as I have on hexbear, though I’m open to evidence to the contrary. You can create a space for a specific ideology without resorting to such an extreme level of censorship and lemmy.world is proof of that. Also see my home instance slrpnk.net, we’re a primarily anarchist instance and we haven’t had to resort to extreme censorship to achieve that.

                Secondly, this comment is indistinguishable from concern-trolling. I’d have to read through your post history or go back and forth with you to know if you were an honest actor or just a troll.

                By what method do you distinguish concern-trolling from legitimate concern? Concern-trolls generally want to shut down discussion, and the whole reason for my concern is that censorship shuts down discussion.

                Thirdly, most of us know your views, and have rejected them.

                They’re not my views, did you miss the part of my comment where I said I disagree with the comments that got them banned?

            • mathemachristian[he]
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              127 days ago

              if people steer clear of our buses and trains because they’re busy doubling as psych wards and homeless shelters.

              is not tame at all it dehumanizes some of societies most vulnerable. Imagine someone who has been in a psych ward or a homeless person reads this, and keep in mind both can be found posting on hexbear.

              • @[email protected]
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                227 days ago

                We don’t live in a tame world, lots of people have deeply problematic viewpoints. When someone who expresses such viewpoints is otherwise well-intentioned it’s better to address them directly and potentially change some minds (or at least plant the seed) than to shun them and further entrench them into a problematic worldview.

                • mathemachristian[he]
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                  127 days ago

                  Depends on the environment you want to foster. There are already lotsa places where these kinds of “debates” are had (lemmy.world for instance) but really no place where the people that are being debated about can relax and not have to be confronted with the dehumanization they already are confronted with in their daily lives.

                  Hexbear prioritizes the latter.

        • @[email protected]
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          428 days ago

          You can block instances yourself, I personally don’t like when an instance makes that decision for me.

          • @[email protected]
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            728 days ago

            Blocking an instance is just equivalent to blocking all the communities on that instance. You’ll still see the blocked instance’s posts and comments in other instances and (maybe more importantly) the instance will still influence your feed via voting. So if hexbear collectively upvotes or downvotes some post, that will influence your feed. Defederation is the only way to prevent that kind of influence.

            • mathemachristian[he]
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              427 days ago

              Downvotes are disabled on hexbear just fyi. One of the reason people leave a comment with stuff they disagree with. But upvoting yeah, very active userbase very actively upvoting means a lot of my feed on lemm.ee is from hexbear.

      • @Sootius
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        128 days ago

        I cannot facepalm hard enough when I see lgbt people (or anyone) who praise western genocidal military alliances either. What’s your point?

        • @[email protected]
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          28 days ago

          Western alliances which are the only places in the world with a robust LGBT rights framework?

          “Nooooo you can’t just give people rights because it makes you look good!”

          • @Sootius
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            28 days ago

            I didn’t realise committing genocide made people look good, I guess. You know those militaries kill lgbt people too right?

      • @[email protected]
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        028 days ago

        I mean, I don’t know enough about North Korea here but Lenin decriminalized homosexuality in like 1920. Stalin recriminalized it in 1932-33 but for a bit there the Soviet Union was the most LGBT friendly country in the world.

        • @[email protected]
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          28 days ago

          Lemme rest, my palm is all sore

          What’s going on with ppl that won’t even do simple google check before commenting something. I for example would be ashamed to peddle some bullshit that is one top search click to disprove or even common sense

        • @jumjummy
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          228 days ago

          What is the point of this, uh, argument? Since then it’s illegal to be LGBT in Russia, so you’re admitting that Russia sucks now? Agreed!

          • @[email protected]
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            -328 days ago

            Russia began to suck hardest when the US succeeded in turning it into a supercharged version of itself. Every bad bit about Russia you don’t like? It’s where the US is headed, thanks to its own imperialism. “Rainbow Capitalism” is as unsustainable as Rainbow Slavery or Rainbow Fascism.

            • @[email protected]
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              528 days ago

              Lmao, .ml really is on a roll with the whole “we love LGBT rights but hate every country which actually has LGBT rights” cognitive dissonance lately.

    • @[email protected]
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      28 days ago

      They have less than 500 MAU. It’s just a bunch of losers yelling at each other.

      Correction, updated data is actually closer to 2k MAU. They are the 4th most active instance, topped by lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and Lemmy.world.

    • BentiGorlichOP
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      2328 days ago

      My guess is that they just needed to have their own community for a lot of stuff because so many instances are defederated from them. Though I am not sure…

      • aasatru
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        2428 days ago

        I guess it’s also natural that subcultures that tend to be banned elsewhere are early adaptors of alternative platforms.

        We’re lucky we didn’t exist when the Trump extremists on Reddit went looking for a new home, or they would probably have been one of the biggest fields in this figure. Hopefully when the right wing extremists arrive instance admins will have the good sense to defederate.

      • Binette
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        1028 days ago

        If I remember correctly, Hexbear was there before the exodus. So that wouldn’t make sense.

        • @[email protected]
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          627 days ago

          Hexbear is older than most of the fediverse, and didn’t have federation enabled for years. It’s a very self-sufficient community.

          • Synapse
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            628 days ago

            Nothing wrong with beehaw as far as I know, but a while ago they defederated lemmy.world because the instance is to big and not moderated enough, or something like that.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 days ago

            No. Just that they’re defederated from lots of big instances so they tend to gave their own communities, which increases their size on chart.

            Unlike Hexbear, they chose to be defederated

    • @[email protected]
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      1828 days ago

      They’ve existed for a while. A lot of subscribers are inactive users. Kind of like reddit where a sub can have 5k people and still be inactive.

    • @ByteMe
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      1128 days ago

      I haven’t even heard of it xd

      • @[email protected]
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        1628 days ago

        I only scroll all for now… Hexbear is the only thing I have blocked. I just got tired of trolly garbage.

      • DarkThoughts
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        1428 days ago

        Most instances block them so most communities on those instances won’t see them either. Once you find certain communities on instances that don’t block them you suddenly see half the comments being from hexbear, which likely quickly makes you block those communities fairly quickly.

          • @[email protected]
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            1628 days ago

            You could go visit hexbear and you’d find out pretty quickly. It’s definitely not for everyone.

          • @[email protected]
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            828 days ago

            Other comments hit on this but I’ll add a little more. There is a good bit of trolls/trolling, some extreme views, and authoritarian government praise. Things like that.

            Lemm.ee (my instance) is still federated so I see hexbear post/ comments. It’s definitely a more problematic instance imo.

            • @ByteMe
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              128 days ago

              Oh okay, got it

              • @[email protected]
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                327 days ago

                You only got replies from hexbear haters so let me balance it out a bit. Hexbear is by far the most LGBT+ friendly instance in the fediverse and has a supermajority of queer users. They’re aggressively anti-bigotry in all its forms and are extremely happy to educate and engage in discussions as long as you approach them in good faith.

                Most people who go out of their way to shit talk them in the wild are just mad hexbear banned them for saying some racist or homophobic shit

                • @ByteMe
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                  126 days ago

                  Okay. Then why is almost every instance defederating?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    226 days ago

                    Because hexbear is full of socialists and most instances are full of rabid pro-genocide liberals.

                  • Cowbee [he/him]
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                    126 days ago

                    It’s not “almost every instance,” it’s largely Lemmy.world. hexbear defederated from some other instances, but most major instances are, in fact, federated with Hexbear.

                    Hexbear was not federated with any instances at all for years until about a year ago in the first place.

    • @Alk
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      828 days ago

      What is hexbear? I never see it in my feed.

              • @[email protected]
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                428 days ago

                Horseshoe theory is essentially Latte-Flavored horseshit

                The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.[6][8]

                Wikipedia: Horseshoe Theory

      • Skua
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        1728 days ago

        It’s essentially where reddit’s old Chapo Trap House community went after reddit banned them in 2020. It started federating with the rest of the fediverse some time last year, but there was a bit of a culture clash between it and some other larger instances and several of them defederated it

        • @[email protected]
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          028 days ago

          To be fair, that’s because liberalism is closer to fascism than any sort of leftism, and many of these instances have a strongly liberal user base because many were with Reddit longer than most leftists were.

          • Skua
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            328 days ago

            I really don’t think the specific date of reddit departure is what shaped the politics of either community, especially not when the one you’re saying was less shaped by reddit was born out of a political subreddit

            Hexbear’s site culture is full of in jokes and big on dunking. That’s always going to be abrasive to outsiders, even without the whole thing where all of their many emojis were enormous on other instances

      • BentiGorlichOP
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        1028 days ago

        I only know it because it is often mentioned when talking about trolling

      • @[email protected]
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        628 days ago

        It’s an instance mostly based around authoritarian communism. They got banished from Reddit quite a bit before the black out.

      • @NOT_RICK
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        128 days ago

        It’s a leftist server. LW defederated from them months ago because they have some, well, interesting takes on things like the war in Ukraine. I can’t recall the exact cited reasons for defederation but I’m sure you could find the defederation post on lemmy world’s announcements page.

        • @[email protected]
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          528 days ago

          Most instance defederated from because they are tankies that talk a lot of bullshit. However, im not entirely sure if I would really call them leftists. More like communistic Authoritarians, yes, communism is something mound mostly in left communities, but not to sure if their takes on human rights for people with other opinions and stuff like that makes them really left.

          • @NOT_RICK
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            428 days ago

            I’d be comfortable calling many of them red fash but I was trying to be diplomatic.

        • @[email protected]
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          428 days ago

          .world never federated with Hexbear from what I remember. I’m pretty sure they were on the block list before Hexbear got federation completed. There was no single incident as far as I know.

          • @[email protected]
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            128 days ago

            Wrong. They federated with them then had a big discussion on if they should defederate (you can probably still find it in meta). It’s why I left - I prefer to make my own defederation decisions (and I like Hexbear, and Piracy too).

            Source: I was there.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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      628 days ago

      Not really surprising. 10 out of the 10 most commented posts in the past year are on hexbear (the top 2 being the weekly trans mega threads). Granted, a lot of that is just the hyper-active posting of a few users. Regardless, if you want a trans community, there’s basically no active alternative to hexbear’s traaa here.

      • @NOT_RICK
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        1528 days ago

        What about blahaj?

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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          1128 days ago

          I’m subscribed to pretty much all the trans coms I know of and traa is 90% of the trans content that shows up. Another 5% are other hexbear trans subs. Traa has as many comments in half a month as mtf@blajah has had in its entire existance and as many in a week as trans@blahaj has made in total (the two largest non-hexbear trans subs afaik).

          • @[email protected]
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            -428 days ago

            This reads like someone telling me that the nazi bar is the only place to go because the nazi bar has people there all the time and the other bars are mostly empty.

            • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]
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              28 days ago

              Cool. Being trans, not tolerating transphobia, and having emotes is comparable to being nazis?

              Also, not suggesting people need to go there because its active. I could go to traa, egg, mtf, agender, enby, etc on reddit, but I don’t want to use reddit and a lot of those communities make hexbear look tame in terms of spamminess and immaturity.

            • Ambii [She/They]
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              528 days ago

              Did you know: you know you can just say you didn’t read the comment?

              It’d be much faster and way easier on everyone else to know to discard your input!